by James Gurley
The
Oracle
of
Delphi
James Gurley
First Montag Press E-Book and Paperback Original Edition August 2013
Copyright © 2013 by James Gurley
As the writer and creator of this story, J.E. Gurley asserts the right to be identified as the author of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. However, the physical paper book may, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, or hired out without the publisher’s prior consent.
Montag Press 978-1-940233-00-0
Cover art and design © 2013 Zachary Adam Kin-Wilde
Author photo © 2013 James Gurley
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s vivid and sometimes disturbing imagination or are used fictitiously without any regards with possible parallel realities. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
MAPS OF THE LAND
Chapter 1: DELPHI
Chatper 2: INTO THE MAW OF THE BEAST
Chapter 3: A TOUR OF DELPHI
Chapter 4: THE WATCHERS' TOWER
Chapter 5: REBELS
Chapter 6: RUMORS
Chapter 7: KING KARAL
Chapter 8: THE COUNCIL OF REGENTS
Chapter 9: KING'S COMPANION
Chapter 10: SIRA
Chapter 11: SUSPICIONS
Chapter 12: THE WRAITH
Chatper 13: ANSWERS
Chapter 14: BLACK WARRENS
Chatper 15: LIFE AS USUAL
Chapter 16: THE HIDDEN LIBRARY
Chapter 17: CATACOMBS
Chapter 18: SANCTUARY
Chapter 19: DOUBTS
Chatper 20: EJECTED
Chapter 21: THE ROOTS OF THE TOWER
Chapter 22: BANISHED
Chapter 23: MORS POINT
Chapter 24: UP RIVER
Chapter 25: FRIDAN
Chapter 26: THE MONASTERY OF ST. PIETER
Chapter 27: THE ENNEAD
Chapter 28: THE TORTURED LAND
Chapter 29: SOJOURN
Chapter 30: THE SPLIT LAND
Chapter 31: THE DARK WALL
Chapter 32: FAILURE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maps of the Land
Delphi
Churum
Valastaria
1
DELPHI
YOUNG TAD DE SILVA EARGERLY SCANNED THE DISTANT HORIZON from atop neatly stacked sacks of grain, baled bolts of brightly dyed cloth, and baskets of dried fruit and vegetables, hoping for some sign of the near-mythical city for which they were bound. The rolling gait of the avian-like karth pulling the heavily laden cart made focusing with the ocular lens difficult. Tad knew that somewhere ahead of them, the sleepy citizens of Delphi were already rising under the first of the triple suns of Charybdis.
Above him, moon clouds, pale pink traced with wispy veins the color of blood, curled upon themselves and pursued one another across the morning sky, riding the high fast winds. Cleodora also called First Sun, not because it was the largest of the three suns but because it rose first, had been above the horizon for over an hour but still painted only a faint glaucous glow to the eastern sky. Crimson dust from the Spring Blow kicked up by the frequent storms and picked up by the ascending currents, stained the sky overhead terra cotta, providing a dazzling backdrop for the scintillating clouds. To the south, a thin azure smudge along the horizon indicated Third Sun, Melaina, almost invisible in the northern latitudes.
The de Silva wagon was really two wagons—two, two-wheeled carts connected by a rotating steel umbilical that allowed the two carts to move independently, more evenly dispersing the weight on the often rough road while the wide wheels provided traction in the loose sand through which they now trekked. The karth, strong-limbed creatures, pulled the carts easily.
“It’s still mor’an’ a day away yet, Tad,” cautioned his uncle, Wilbreth de Silva, from the driver’s seat of the cart. The studded metal band crowning his forehead matched those worn by the two karth. The band allowed his uncle to keep a tight control on the edgy creatures among the other draft animals of the Caravan by sending his soothing thoughts to implanted receptors in the karth’s brain that stimulated production of endorphin-like secretions called pyramines from special glands. Unlike their domesticated kin, wild karth were ferocious predators, living in the wet plains in the eastern continent of Valastaria.
Tad’s uncle held the reins loosely in his hands. The well-trained karth seldom needed more than a simple suggestion to speed up or slow down. The controlling band was one of the few remaining technological marvels of an earlier age, a time before the Fall. Legend said that Delphi boasted many such devices of the Forefathers.
Tad brushed back his long brown locks and sighed. “I thought we would see it by now. You said Delphi was as big as a mountain and as wide as the sea.” His voice growled with the youthful exasperation of long sojourns.
His uncle laughed and slapped his knee with one large, calloused hand. He looked at Tad with his bright green eyes, the same color eyes as his impatient nephew but with deep crow’s feet marring their edges. “Well, I might have stretched it just a bit, boy, and I was just about your age when I first went there. Everything looked bigger then, but it’s plenty big. Just now, it’s over the far horizon. We should be there by dusk. You’ll see the lights of the Black Tower first rising high above the city, just as I did those many years ago.”
Tad collapsed the magnifying ocular lens and placed it in his pouch. He grabbed the water skin bouncing against the side of the cart and beat off the accumulated layers of fine red dust to take a sip of water to soothe his parched throat. The dry plains through which they now traveled were a series of ancient, dry lakebeds interspersed with low, crescent-shaped red dunes slowly crawling toward the city, pushed even faster by the winds of the Spring Blow. Soaring, snow-capped mountains rose like staggered steps on each side of the ancient lakebed, funneling the western winds over the dry plains and keeping the dust trail the Caravan raised following them like a crimson shadow. Occasionally, one of the heavy-laden wagons would bog down in the soft earth, requiring the Caravan to halt while the wagon was unloaded, freed from its sandy snare, and reloaded, a time-consuming laborious process, but the Caravan abandoned no wagon that could move or left behind a wagon on its own.
The large Caravan rolled in a vast choking cloud of dust that invaded every pore of Tad’s body. It hung in the air like a fine, gravity-defying mist, hardly stirred by the light morning breeze. The thirty wagons and carts and the weary group of Haffa pilgrims following dutifully on foot closely behind them moved invisible inside a veil of their own making. Tad wondered if their cloud was visible from the tall walls of Delphi heralding their approach.
The Caravan was an odd
assemblage of squeaky two-wheeled carts, ponderous four-wheeled draft wagons, small multi-wheeled Quarn sungliders and wheel-less light sand sledges drawn by ponies, oxen, avian karth, heavily armored reptilian drakken, canine-like mastiffs called vorels and a few drissel, strange, shaggy sloth-like creatures from the deep forests to the south. When the Caravan had set off two months earlier, an odd collection of steam-powered and gasoline driven carts had accompanied the long line of conveyances, but those had broken down along the way, victims of either the lack of water or of frequent mechanical failure. Tad had thought the gasoline conveyances smelly and loud and he had not been sorry to see them leave the Caravan. Fossil fuels were rare on Charybdis, depleted heavily during the years before the Veil fell, destroying everything. Oil for lighting and lubrication and natural gas for cooking taxed their limited supply. He did not consider wasting it to operate vehicles a priority.
Of all the self-propelled conveyances, only the small Quarn sungliders had held up to the rugged trek. Each sunglider, an eight-wheeled wooden rail upon which was attached a blown bubble of xaras plant resin, held ten diminutive Quarn. A large solar sail spread upon a solitary mast provided power to tiny electric motors on each wide wheel, which propelled the vehicle forward at a fast human trot, a little faster than a Quarn could run on two legs. The ever-prevalent dust hid the three suns and reduced the sail’s efficiency until the sungliders barely outpaced the short-legged Haffa at the rear of the column. The Plin batteries, smaller xaras resin bubbles filled with a thick slurry of plant sap, metal filings and a bioluminescent algae, were so depleted Tad doubted that they would last until true sunrise.
Four times each planetary year, or two times each Terran year, trade Caravans made the long weary sojourn from various far-flung provinces of Churum to Delphi, the largest coastal city and seat of power. With them marched scores of pilgrims eager to pay homage to Saracen, fabled ruler of Delphi after the Fall. No one now remembered if Saracen had been a Terran, Quarn, Plin or Haffa, but the enigmatic Haffa who had chosen him as their own made up the majority of the pilgrims. This was his uncle’s third Caravan but Tad’s first visit to Delphi, his first journey out of the Black Mountains.
Tad peered through the dust haze to the rear of the Caravan at the group of barely visible Haffa plodding slowly along the sun-baked dirt. Scarcely reaching as high as Tad’s chest and covered with a soft, downy fur ranging in color from russet to almost golden, the Haffa closely resembled Terran orangutans except for their shorter arms and legs and human-like gait. They wore brief, multi-pocketed leather aprons about their waists, their only clothing. Their sex was indistinguishable to an outsider. In addressing them, they preferred the title ‘Ta’ or ‘Enlightened One’. Like most of the people in the Caravan, a fine layer of dust obscured their true color.
“Why do they come, Uncle?”
“The Haffa are a proud people, small in stature but large in honor and tradition. Their holy book, the Tiata Ta, claims that the Haffa were the first to discover Charybdis long ago, even before the Terrans arrived, but their name for Charybdis was lost in time. They ruled seven worlds then, trading throughout the galaxy.” Wilbreth’s face darkened. “Then the Veil came.”
Tad nodded. No one could add much more about the Veil or the Fall that followed. History was too fickle for truth to have survived unscathed; instead, only scattered tales, each more fanciful than the last, purported to explain the End of Times. It was certain all races fell from grace to become scavengers or worse as the skies darkened, the world shook and all communication with other worlds ended. In the over five hundred years since, no one had ever tried to make contact with Charybdis. No ships arrived from the outside. Slowly, the eight surviving races of Charybdis had risen from scattered small bands of nomadic herders to farmers to an early Industrial Age level.
“I see,” Tad replied quietly, mulling over what he could remember of tales he had heard. “Do you think anyone else survived?”
His Uncle Wilbreth looked at him and sadly shook his head. “It is said that the Veil came from the center of the galaxy and swept outwards. Charybdis is a planet in the Fringes, one of the outer arms the galaxy separated from the main body of the Milky Way by a vast void. Perhaps the effects of the Veil lessened by the time it reached here. Perhaps the very perverse gravity anomalies that first drew men here shielded Charybdis, but the other worlds … I just don’t know.”
Tad knew from the somber tone of his uncle’s voice that he thought they were alone in the universe.
“Alone,” he whispered. The word echoed silently in his mind, sounding hollow and haunting. He had gone on overnight journeys into the forests near home, but even there he was within earshot of one homestead or another. To be truly alone was an idea that frightened him. After a few minutes of sober reflection, he asked, “Why have you not returned to Delphi in all these years, Uncle?”
His uncle snorted out a rough laugh. “A simple enough question but the answer is not so simple. Delphi is … well Delphi is a world unto itself. They give little thought to the world around them. It is a city of cheap pleasures and the pursuit of those things your poor father so often warned against. I suppose it took so many years to steel myself for the journey.”
Tad could barely remember his father’s face, dead since Tad was just six. He had a vague image of a tall man with sad eyes and even sadder smile, thin, gaunt cheeks and thinning black hair. Always a restless adventurer, his father had died while exploring the Black Mountains in search of the lost Sanctuary of Dureth. His mother’s death had followed soon afterwards of a broken heart, or so his uncle and aunt had claimed. Others whispered of a fever of the mind.
“He said that Delphi was evil.”
“Evil?” His uncle nodded. “Maybe, but mostly just not Godly.”
His uncle’s answer confused him. “Isn’t that the same as evil?”
“Well, evil is one thing and there’s evil enough in the world, but just not caring what happens to others is another. The people of Delphi have no One True God to worship and care little what happens after death, sometimes selling their souls for money and power and becoming Wraiths. They live each day in pleasure or seeking pleasure, some few seeking pleasure in the pain or misery of others. Whether evil or just un-Godly, they care little for their souls.
“It is a wondrous place, mind you, filled with magic and beauty and fine art and things almost unimaginable, but do not let it burrow under your skin and fester like a burr. My last visit I stayed too long and felt its sickness growing in me. I returned to the Black Mountains before I lost my soul.” He sighed. “It was a lonely place. We Terrans are few in number in Delphi and are despised by many races for what they think was our part in bringing darkness upon them.”
“Did we, bring the Veil, I mean?” Tad had often pondered this question while lying in bed in that twilight realm between fast sleep and wakefulness when answers to such bold questions seem attainable.
His uncle shrugged his broad shoulders. “Who can say? Man explored deeper into the heart of the galaxy than most other races. Who can say what we found slumbering there in that dense whirl of stars? I heard tales of civilizations so old they no longer needed corporeal bodies. They existed as pure energy and swatted man back to the Fringes of the galaxy as we would a swarm of irritating flies.” He slapped his leg. “This is such dark talk for the promise of a fine morning. Let us speak on brighter things or speak not at all.”
Tad remained silent and thought on his uncle’s words. His uncle seldom spoke on such things on the farm within earshot of Aunt Wilena. She would growl at her husband, wag a finger in his direction and say, “Now don’t spook the boy, Wil. Ghosts and goblins are enough without somber tales from history.”
A few times while fishing or hunting, his uncle would recall the past in hushed tones, especially after drinking a few cups of elderberry cider.
“Terrans came to Charybdis more than a century after the Geck wars, drawn here by the gravity anomalies existing between Ch
arybdis and her sister planet, Scylla, and especially because of Cleodora circling Charybdis like a fiery moon, a real mystery. Many things could be manufactured in a gravity anomaly that could not be manufactured anywhere else—soft data crystals, polarized heavy water molecules, medicines. We had a vast empire of worlds then running all the way down the length of the Lesser Arm, pointed like a finger at the fiery heart of the galaxy, and we were eager for more. We were a young race, vigorous, cocksure and full of ourselves. Some say foolish. We weren’t ready for what we found in the Core.” He would always take another sip of cider as if to brace himself and add, “The Veil swept it all away, every blessed thing. We had to fight the other races for survival. We might have to again. Old grudges linger long on Charybdis.” Then, he would sing old songs and speak no more of the past.
Some of the things his uncle spoke of were mysteries. Polarized heavy water molecules, data crystals, gravity wells, and nanites—just words from some old book he had found in a library, but the ideas, the folly behind the fall of man, these he pondered as deeply as any sixteen-year-old mind could, yet came away with little more than a headache for his troubles.
Tad was sixteen in Terran Years, still used by all Terrans and subsequently adopted by the Saddir, Lilith and Plin to measure time. One complete orbit of First Sun, Corycia, took 720 of Charybdis’s 25-hour days rather than Earth’s 365-day year. Therefore, Terrans measured New Year’s Day at apogee and at perigee, the planet’s closest and farthest approach to the sun, losing about fifteen days per Terran Year. This made Tad actually fifteen and a half-years old, but keeping Terran units of measurements was a holdover from the early days of Charybdis that had lasted the nearly 800 years of Terrans presence on the planet.
As the Caravan progressed, First Sun Corycia slowly peeked above the horizon ahead of them, no more than a golden smear across the eastern dust-laden sky, but its warmth dispelled the chill of the night. Tad quickly shed his outer cloak. The smaller Second Sun, Cleodora, was lost in the glow of its larger sister, but would soon race ahead on its twice-a-day journey through the daytime sky, its blue-white light slicing through the clouds and dust to lend its light to Corycia, washing the land with a cerulean radiance. Tad watched Corycia creep up the sky as if forcing itself out of the earth. He could easily cover its disk with his thumb, but he knew that it was over two million kilometers in diameter, the size of 133 Charybdises. Finally, he could remain quiet no longer.